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The follow-up to When A City Falls celebrates the people of Christchurch and the wins of the rebuild, but loses some nuance in the edit, writes Erin Harrington.
I’ve lived in Ōtautahi Christchurch all my life, but it took me until this week to watch Gerard Smyth’s 2011 film When A City Falls. This award-winning, observational documentary records the impacts of the Canterbury earthquake sequence that began on September 4, 2010, when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, from an undiscovered fault line, threw everyone out of bed at 4:35am. Even ten years on, this viewing had to be under controlled conditions: daylight, frequent breaks, diazepam. Each time I’m confronted with that shaky phone footage from the appalling magnitude 6.3 quake on February 22, 2011, of people cowering in Cathedral Square as the bell tower collapses, or racing towards rubble of the CTV building to drag out the wounded and the dead, my skin goes clammy and I want to vomit.
First thought: Thom Gunn, âThoughts on Unpackingâ. âI realise,â he ends, âthat love is an arranging.â No sooner thought, I think of another, cracking conclusion: âThe world might change⦠Change as our kisses are changing
without our thinking.â And then I think of âBreakfast Songâ, another Elizabeth Bishop poem weâre lucky to have in print. Of Derek Mahonâs âMonochromeâ. Of Seamus Heaneyâs âSkunkâ. Even Matt Healyâs âSomebody Elseâ (as good as Dylanâs âIdiot Windâ).
âTo My Wife at Midnightâ, Grahamâs best. âSleeping alone together,â he looks at her beside him, asleep in her âlonely
Gerard Smyth never set out to make a follow-up to
When A City Falls, his acclaimed documentary which told the story of the immediate aftermath of the February 22, 2011 Christchurch earthquake. “No, no, no, no” he says emphatically. “But I kept filming over the years. And I think I’d probably have 600 hours, but there’s probably heaps more footage and stories that we could go through. “And in those years it was in the back of my mind that one day these could be distilled and crystallised into one documentary.”
Supplied That idea became
When A City Rises, which chronicles Christchurch’s recovery in the days, weeks, months and years following the devastating earthquake.
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